


Shrive

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, F/M, First Angst Then Fluff, as it goes, holiday fic, pancake day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Fitzsimmons finally make pancakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shrive

It was very late – so late it was maybe better described as early. The usual buzz of the Playground had given way to the hum of florescent lights in the long corridors and an occasional beep from the variety of alarm systems that served in place of human attention; the night owls had trailed away to bed and the early risers weren’t coming out of their REM cycles just yet. Alone in the lab, Jemma watched the centrifuge spin through sleep-blurred eyes and listened hard to the silence. It was a rare thing anymore. It seemed a pity to waste it, even though the project she was working on wasn’t pressing and the need to rest was making her fingers fumble with the samples. If she went to bed, anyway, she knew what would happen: she would stare at the ceiling until the false sun rose, mind tracing well-worn grooves and never getting any further. Or, maybe, she would cry herself to sleep. It was a 50-50 chance these days. More often than not she found herself here, working away long past the rest of her technicians. Long past the time, even, when Fitz would have been here tinkering. If he still worked in the lab. She pulled the sample from the centrifuge and studiously avoided looking over at his bench. Not that it mattered; the empty spaced mocked her whether she was looking at it or not.

“Simmons?”

She jumped, dropping the sample. Her heart started racing for more reasons than one. “Fitz! You startled me.”

“Sorry.” He stepped into the light, hands twisted together in front of him. “I didn’t mean to—to, um…is it okay?”

“Is what—my project? Yes, it’s nothing important. Nothing to worry about.” She was babbling, she heard herself babbling and hated it. “I…I didn’t think anyone else was awake.”

“Can’t sleep,” he said briefly, though he didn’t look as if he had tried. That was the same checked shirt and grey sweater he had been wearing today—not that she had noticed. “I, um, heard some noises—no.” He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose and staring at the floor. “May said you were in here late a lot. I wanted…um, I wanted—do you know what day it is?”

“Monday,” she answered without thinking, too busy trying to figure out what he wanted and couldn’t bring himself to say.

“But at home it’s already Tuesday.”

“Yes, I suppose. Fitz, what—”

“Shrove Tuesday,” he said, looking at her for the first time since he had come in. “Which means it’s—”

“Pancake Day,” she finished with him, breathing it out where he was bold. 

He nodded firmly. “So, um, I think we should celebrate.”

Gripping the edge of the counter until her knuckles turned white, she bit back the “yes!” that wanted to tumble out of her mouth and took a measured breath. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait until the rest of the team can—”

“No.” His eyes turned to wells too deep for her to see the bottom. “I want it to be like always.”

She looked up, blinking back tears she hoped he couldn’t see. “All right,” she said, her traitorous voice giving out at the end. “All right. Let me clean up here.”

“What, you’re so…so tidy now?” The smile he shot her was like lightening, but she caught it and kept it, ducking her head to fuss with her paperwork so he couldn’t see the frankly embarrassing one that spread across her own face.

“Oh, you know. I have to set a good example now.” Pausing in her clean-up, she forced her smile down to an appropriate level and nodded toward the door. “Go on ahead; I’ll just be a minute.”

He went, looking over his shoulder on the way out the door, and she wrapped both arms around her middle in a useless attempt to keep herself together. Pathetic, she was pathetic, it wasn’t anything, probably no one else knew how to make proper pancakes, probably he just came to find her when everyone else wasn’t around so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself in front of them (as if that would happen), probably he didn’t know what the invitation would mean to her. It was nothing. She couldn’t let herself read too much into it.

But he hadn’t stuttered once, which meant he had carefully chosen the words he wanted to say beforehand—and one of the words was always. 

Making her way down the hall to the kitchen, she clenched her fists at her side and willed herself to be calm. Whatever Fitz wanted, things weren’t the same as always, and she had already made the mistake of pretending they were too many times. What had been achingly slowly rebuilding between them was fragile; she didn’t want to do anything to ruin it. No. She had to let him decide what he was comfortable with and she would match it, glad for anything at all. 

When she reached the kitchen, Fitz was sitting on a stool by the range, turning a wooden spoon over and over in his hands. On the left burner, a shallow silver pan sat ready and waiting; on the right, he had rigged up their preferred contraption for keeping pancakes warm while the rest were cooking. It had been quick work, she thought. She hadn’t taken that long to get here. He started when she came in, half rising, then thought the better of it and sat back down with a thump. “I, um, mixed the flour for you,” he said, pointing to a bowl on the counter to his right. 

She could see the traces of the sifting process all over his sweater and only barely refrained from brushing it off. Instead, she peered into the bowl before heading to the sink to wash her hands. The flour mixture was smooth and even, the well in the middle perfectly round. “Thank you, Fitz. It looks just right.”

“It’s not, um, comp—it’s not hard.”

Soaping up with clinical precision, she kicked herself. “Of course not. Only you know what a mess I make trying to get that stupid hole right.”

“It might be hard to explain to—to Coulson why you can’t move your, um, your eyebrows.”

Letting out a sigh of relief, she matched his teasing tone. “That only happened one time! And you know it was a perfect storm of factors anyway; it isn’t as though just straight flour hardens into a crust like that. Good job, too, or you’d never be able to wear that cardigan again—honestly, Fitz, did you sift it through your sweater or a sieve?”

She turned to grab a dishcloth and found him staring, his mouth slightly open. It was an improvement over avoiding looking at her at all, she supposed, but every time she saw it she couldn’t help wondering if he had looked at her like that before and she had just never noticed. If she had, she wondered, what might be different now? She glanced away, concentrating very hard on drying her hands, and cleared her throat. “Were you thinking we would let the batter rest, or - ”

“I haven’t noticed it make—they taste the same to me.”

“How do you know when you eat them so fast?” Allowing herself a smile, she flung the dishtowel over her shoulder and went to the fridge to gather the eggs, butter, and milk. Their supply runs were so hit-and-miss she was worried there wouldn’t be enough, but a full dozen eggs sat next to a pound of proper butter and a small jug of whole milk. “This is lucky,” she said. “I would have thought the eggs would all be gone.”

“Lucky,” he echoed. “I’ll do the milk—”

“And the butter. I remember. It only feels like another lifetime since we’ve done this.” 

She had meant the comment to be flippant, a throw-away, but it hung in the air like smoke. His mouth snapped shut and he hunched over as if being chastised for something; she closed her eyes and bowed her head, wishing she had a hand free to bury her face in. Oh, Lord, would she ever stop saying the wrong thing? “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m—”

“No, Fitz—” she huffed an exasperated breath, “—that was me. But I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

Wordlessly, he held out his good hand for the butter, which she handed to him without meeting his eyes. He took the milk, too, and turned to face the counter on the left side of the stove where a plastic measuring cup she hadn’t noticed before waited. Keeping the eggs, she moved to her own counter and cracked two of them into the perfect well in the flour. Round bowl, round well, round yolk: everything neat and orderly, nothing like the mess she had just made. There was a savage pleasure in whisking them together, forcing the egg to get along with the flour. So there. 

They worked in silence now, each concentrating on their own tasks. At least, he was concentrating. Despite her best efforts, her attention kept straying to him. It was just a clinical evaluation, she told herself, since he wouldn’t actually let her run tests and she had to sneak assessments when he didn’t notice. On a purely professional level, she was pleased. His right hand, the good one, kept the pan of melting butter in a constant, even swirl; at the same time he was carefully mixing up the milk and water compound with his left hand. From what she could tell, he had poured the milk without spilling a drop. He wouldn’t have been able to do that before she left. His hands were coming back to themselves little by little, gaining in confidence and flexibility every time she was able to watch them. If only she could convince him of it. If only that would actually make a difference. The mixture done, he set it on the counter by her elbow and scuttled back to his side of the stove to finish off the butter. Of course, he couldn’t let it burn. Still, she couldn’t help feeling like he just couldn’t be nearer to her than the two feet of the range.

“So,” he finally said, “the butter won’t be…um…I couldn’t find the—the—” Stopping, he took a deep breath and tried again. “It will still have the bits in.”

“It won’t be clarified?” He nodded. She shrugged. “That’s fine. I like them better that way.”

“More pockets for the sugar,” he said, trying to smile.

“Yes.” She smiled back, raising the whisk out of the bowl to watch the batter drip back in. “Only it might be too sweet without lemon.”

“We have lemon.”

Her head went up, surprised. If eggs were a rarity, produce was a novelty, and no one ever bought anything as useless as lemons. “Where did we—”

“Hunter brought them back from his last mission. I had to promise to save him a pancake.”

Hunter’s last mission was a week ago. Warming at the implication, she held the bowl out for his inspection to draw his attention away from the softness she could feel spreading across her face. “Look right to you?”

“Yeah,” he said, not even glancing at it, “I’m sure it’s good.”

“Butter, then.”

Without measuring, he carefully poured a pool of golden liquid from the pan into the middle of the batter, then scraped the rest into a small glass bowl to the side of the stove. Where he had found all this paraphernalia, she didn’t know; the Playground’s kitchen was not what one would call well-stocked with kitchenware. That done, he set the pan back onto the burner and turned it up as high as it would go. The heat from the pan reflected onto her face as she leaned over it, watching the haze of the air above. Fitz did the same from a more appropriate distance. “Get back, Jemma. Do you want to have eyebrows left in the morning?”

“Oh, Fitz! It’s not that hot.” But she moved back anyway. Her cheeks were getting rather warm.

When a drop of water flicked into the pan popped and danced before evaporating, they turned down the heat so Fitz could grease the pan with some of the melted butter on a bit of paper. She would have preferred to do it herself – the pan was awfully hot – but that had never been her job, and offering would hurt his feelings. Instead, she readied the batter to go in the pan as soon as he said the word. Speed was everything with pancakes.

“Now, Simmons,” he said, turning slightly to the side to open a space for her to step in. Lifting the dripping ladle, she tried not to think about the fact that this was as close to him as she’d been in months and poured the batter into the exact middle of the pan. As soon as it sizzled, he rolled the pan around in a circle so the batter touched every edge, then set it back over the heat and began counting. “Zero, one, one—”

“Two,” she chimed in, watching the pancake’s edges curl up and brown, “three, five, eight…”

They counted together to the 22nd expression of the Fibonacci Sequence—the foolproof way to measure thirty seconds, even and steady where “one-alligator, two-alligator” failed—without missing a beat. It was second-nature, almost. Only that gave her enough time to think ahead to what came next in the ritual and worry. She didn’t want to think about what it would do to him to fail.

“6,765, 10,946, 17,711.” Fitz sucked in a breath and gave the pan a quick flick, sending the pancake over the side and into the air. It was impossible to see anything moving so fast, but Jemma could have sworn she had enough time to stop breathing while she watched it go through every angle of 180 degrees before he caught it again. She bent over his arm to see the results. It was exactly in the center with the raw side down, not streak of batter to betray a slide off the rim. The smile that spread across Fitz’s face glowed brightly enough to power Los Angeles; Jemma couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him that pleased and proud. Maybe, she thought, she never had. Her hand went out of its own volition to rest on his shoulder. “Oh, well done! That was beautiful.”

A shiver ran under her fingers, but he didn’t move away. In fact, he stepped even closer to her as he moved to slide the finished pancake onto the warmed plate that rested over the other burner. Sparks dashed from the brief brush of his sleeve against hers. “I think that’s the best—the best first pancake I ever made.” 

Round, only slightly browned, evenly thin across its whole circumference, the pancake rested on the plate, a thing of glory. She almost thought it would be better to save it as proof of Fitz’s accomplishment. “Look,” she would say, “look what you still can do.” But that was silly, of course, and would probably embarrass him. And make him angry at the waste of perfectly good food. “There’s only one way to tell,” she said, picking it up and tearing it down the middle. 

He accepted his half soberly, squeezing it between his fingers. “Feels alright.”

Inspecting the edges, she agreed. “No unsightly lumps. Good colour.”

Rolling the pancakes up, they assessed the spring and the elasticity and the smell, then popped the whole thing into their mouths at once. Her eyes flew open as the pancake all but melted on her tongue, chewy and light with just a hint of crisp at the edges. It was perfect—too perfect for a first pancake. They never came out this well on the first try.

Being a much faster chewer than she was, Fitz finished his pancake first. “That was too good for our first try.”

She swallowed quickly, nodding. “Exactly what I was thinking. It’s unheard of. A perfect first pancake must exist but no one knows what it looks like.”

“Until now,” he pointed out. “We’ve dis-discovered the…missing link of pancakes.”

“Yes,” she said, warmth spreading through her belly and trickling into her smile as she met his eyes and held them. “We have.”

Something flashed over his face—she didn’t know what it was, anymore, he had all these expressions she couldn’t explain that turned his face almost to a stranger’s—and he took a quick breath, stiffening his shoulders. This expression she knew: he had something to say. She waited, not looking away, hardly blinking.

“The, um, the question is, can we do it again?”

Turning back to the stove abruptly, he dipped his greasy paper into the melted butter and began running it over the pan. She tried not to feel disappointed as she measured out another ladleful of batter. 

“Of course we can; it’s just a matter of repeating the exact same procedures. The batter is half the battle, and the heat of the pan is the other forty-five percent.”

“What’s the - ”

“Skill,” she said firmly.

They had turned out another three above average pancakes, slipping them onto the warmed plate to keep until the batter was used up, when the light at the other end of the room flicked on. “Sorry,” Skye’s voice came, flat and exhausted. “I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“It’s all right.”

“You didn’t bother us.”

As she plodded closer, her tousled, rumpled appearance speaking volumes about the quality of her sleep, Skye blinked in confusion. “FitzSimmons? What are you doing?”

“Making pancakes,” Fitz said, neatly sliding a fourth to join the others.

Jemma put down a sheet of waxed paper on top of it. “We’re celebrating Pancake Day. It’s already tomorrow at home.”

“Oookay.” Pulling out one of the tall stools, Skye perched on it and slumped over the counter, pillowing her chin on her arms. “Simmons, remember that time I asked you how much the earth weighs?”

“A technically inaccurate question, but yes.”

“It was…”

“1.3 x 10 to the 25th pounds.”

“That’s what I thought,” Skye sighed. “I think I feel every single one of them pressing down on me. Yes, Fitz, I know I’m not under them all.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he protested. Jemma shot Skye a look. They both knew he was.

“We couldn’t sleep either,” she explained.

“So you decided to celebrate a made-up holiday that gives you an excuse to eat pancakes. Makes sense to me.”

They gaped first at each other, then at her.

“It’s not made up!”

“Bar-barbarian.”

“What are you talking about?” Skye looked between them, eyebrows raised in a ghost of a bemused expression. “I’ve literally never heard of Pancake Day in my life. Except the one at IHOP.”

Fitz motioned her to pour another spoonful of batter into the pan. “I think people in less—less-civilized countries call it…um, it’s called…”

“Mardi Gras,” Jemma finished, stepping out of the way of his elbow. “Zero, one, one...”

Skye watched the whole process without making a sound beyond a squawk when Fitz flipped the pancake, obviously too stunned to keep up her usual running commentary. At least, it had been usual before. “Wow,” she said when they finished. “You’re pancake-making machines.”

“We should be,” Fitz said briefly. “We’ve been doing it for ten years.”

“Every year since the Academy,” Jemma added softly, studiously avoiding looking at either of them. Saying it out-loud forced memories on her that she had been avoiding. Ten years was a long time. They had hardly even been friends the first time they made pancakes together, just barely finding their way from “mortal enemies turned lab partners” to “collaborators extraordinaire”. And Pancake Day had come and she had been desperately homesick, and even her genius partner who she wasn’t sure even liked her had seemed like a better alternative than two lonely pancakes in her room. They had made a serious mess of the kitchen and burned more pancakes than had come out, but by the end of the night she learned of his passion for monkeys and had told him why she loved dissections, and they never looked back from there. 

Until recently. But she pushed that thought away, too.

Skye heaved herself up and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I’ll let you get back to it, then. I just came to make some tea. Try May’s Zen thing.”

“Does it work?” she asked, ready to grasp at any straws possible.

“No.” Skye chuckled humourlessly. “But trying something helps. And it keeps me out of my head.” 

Jemma watched at her friend as she stood there, keeping herself together by sheer force of will, every line of her taut enough to snap at any minute. During the day one would forget, sometimes, that anything had happened; Skye had learned soldiering on from the best of the best and took the lessons to heart. But at night, one just couldn’t keep it up. Jemma knew from personal experience. From the sympathetic look on Fitz’s face, she suspected he did as well. Else, what were they all doing in the kitchen at three in the morning? “Stay, Skye, we want you to,” she said, words already gone before she realized that she wasn’t supposed to speak for him anymore.

But he shot her a ‘good idea’ look, nodding in agreement. “There’s plenty. Not a bad one in the batch.”

“You could squeeze the lemons.” 

Skye’s glance flicked between them, weighing something Jemma couldn’t see. Then her face softened, just a little, and she smiled, just a bit. “These have got to be the weirdest pancakes ever.”

“The most delicious pancakes ever,” Fitz corrected, and gestured to Jemma that he was ready to make another one.

Skye stayed with them until all the batter was gone, snagging pancakes just out of the pan and eating three with Nutella before she finally was convinced to try it the proper way. “I still like Nutella better,” she said, but traded off between the two until she stopped at a total of eight. Jemma and Fitz eyed her with respect. Eight pancakes tied the all-time record. It wasn’t like before. It couldn’t have been; they are all too cracked to laugh as easily as they did before, and their hope is too fragile to bring into the light. But Jemma saw the weight slowly lift off Skye’s shoulders and the way Fitz’s sentences stopped halting, heard herself begin a story with “Remember when?” and she knew that, just for this moment, they were all right. 

Finally, Skye stood and stretched, licking the last of the Nutella off her fingers. “It’s absolutely ridiculous with how much sugar I have ingested in the last hour, but I think I can finally go to sleep. Unless you want me to stay and help with the dishes?”

“I think we have it, right, Jemma?” Fitz looked at her hesitantly, expectation hovering in his gaze. She nodded, trying to be brisk and hoping she wasn’t actually looking as pleased as she felt.

“It’s just a two person job. We can manage.”

“Yeah,” Skye said, “I think you can.” Then, in a rush, she came around the counter and wrapped an arm around each of their necks, pulling them toward her in a giant hug. Jemma started, then relaxed into it, putting her own arm around Skye’s back and squeezing. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” 

“Yeah,” Fitz agreed, patting awkwardly. It was, of course, an accident that his hand bumped hers as he did so. But as he didn’t flinch away, Jemma counted it a victory.

After Skye left, Fitz gathered up the plates and dumped them in the sink while she began disassembling the warming device. “Oh, Fitz! We didn’t save any pancakes for Hunter.”

“ ‘s okay. He’ll, um, he’ll understand.”

The stuttering was back, then. Naturally, since they were alone. She chose to ignore it. “He doesn’t seem a very understanding individual.”

Avoiding her eyes, Fitz put a tea towel over his shoulder and tucked another into the waist of his jeans like an apron. “Oh, he’s…he makes a fuss but…he knows what—what this was for.”

She squeezed washing-up liquid over the plates and put an inappropriately large dollop into the pan, stomach now in her shoes. That sounded ominous. So, not just to make pancakes then? This whole thing was for some deeper reason that she had, heretofore, remained unaware of? Even though Hunter—of all people—knew? 

“Simmons, the water.”

“What?” She shook her head, startled out of her reverie.

Fitz leaned over her and hit down the handle of the faucet, pointing at the froth that threatened to spill out on the counter. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Jerking her hair back into a ponytail, she set her shoulders and began scrubbing hard, much harder than the plates required and too hard, probably, for the pan. No matter. Who knew what this was for. Maybe it was just their final hurrah and next year they wouldn’t even be making pancakes. Tears welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision; she blinked, and they rolled down her cheeks. 

She could feel his eyes on her as he waited, towel held out for the clean plates. “Um. You don’t look—”

“It’s fine.”

“I know we aren’t—we haven’t—but if—”

She shoved a plate at him, heedless of how well he could grasp it. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” He concentrated on the task, making sure every single speck of water was gone before putting it away. She was not watching his hands again, she was not, but she couldn’t help noticing that the plate remained steady despite the fact that they were visibly shaking. They wiped, they rubbed, they slid around the rim, and not once did they falter. Not for that plate, or the small glass bowl, or the tea mug, or anything else.

When only the pan was left, she pulled the stopper out of the sink and watched the soap drain away. It was a good thing she was a scientist, she thought drearily. If she had been an English major, say, she probably would have been depressed all the time at the pathetic metaphors life presented her with on a daily basis. As a scientist, she could access the emptying sink empty with a cold heart: oh look, the force of the stream as it falls off the pan is disrupting the bond of the water molecules. Nothing sad about it. Pan cleaned, she handed it over. “That’s the last of it then.”

“Yes.” He gripped it with both towel-shrouded hands and held it, not making a move to begin drying. “Simmons—Jemma. Um, I had a—a—”

She put her hands on the edge of the counter and bowed her head. “A thing?” she asked, shards in her voice. “Like before, when you told me you were leaving?”

“No,” he said, “well, yes, but—no. A—an—”

“A question?” she flung out, “an idea, an accusation, a theory—”

“An apology.”

Her head shot up as all the air evaporated from her lungs—would he ever stop taking her breath away? “What?”

Wringing the panhandle, he ducked his head and looked at the ground. “An apology.”

“An apology—but Fitz—”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “because I—I know that leaving the lab—leaving hurt you. Only I thought it would be for the best. And maybe—maybe it is but—it’s still not—” He stopped, placed the still-wet pan on the counter, and carefully dried his hands on his makeshift apron before finally meeting her eyes. “It’s still not good. And maybe it was the same for you when you—when you were at—at, um, Hydra. And I didn’t under—I didn’t try to understand. So, um, I’m sorry.”

The blue of his eyes was too much, a flood of remorse and sincerity she would drown in if she looked any longer. Jemma could swear she felt her heart cracking in her chest. It was wrong for him to apologise, when it had been she that had done the leaving and the lying in the first place. What did he have to be sorry for, sacrificing himself and then getting away from the physical reminder of all he’d lost? And yet, if she was honest with herself, she had been nursing hurt too. Maybe she didn’t blame him, but it had almost killed her that he wouldn’t even try to hear her side, that he couldn’t trust her enough to believe she only wanted what was best for him. So maybe he did. Maybe, if she was really honest, the pain in her heart was only the breaking of a bone to re-set it.

“So. Um, that’s it.”

She had been too deep in thought to see what he was doing and didn’t realise until he brushed past her that he had piled the bowls and the whisk and the sifter into the pan and was now leaving, taking off again without hearing what she had to say. “Fitz!” 

He stopped and turned, arrested by her voice as surely as if she had reached out and grabbed him.

The smile she offered was quavery. “That’s what this was about, apologising?”

He shifted from one foot to the other, hands too full to fidget. “It, um, it seemed…appropriate.”

“It was,” she said, seeing them in the Academy kitchen again. “It was, it was lovely. And thank you. And…” She looked down, grabbing her wrist with the other hand, then thought the better of it. If he could be brave enough, so could she. “I’m sorry too.”

She expected the next thing out of his mouth to be “for what?” and so began a list: for leaving, for lying, for pretending like everything could be the same again, for anything I did that hurt you or made you feel you weren’t good enough.

“I forgive you.”

“For everything I did that hurt you, I never meant—I’m sorry?”

He nodded, serious. “Yes, you already said that. And I forgive you.” 

“You—you don’t need to know why?”

He just shook his head.

“You should be angry,” she asked, holding her breath.

“I am. I still am, a bit. But mostly, I forgive you.” And then he smiled at her, for real, and only the fact that he still held a pile of kitchenware kept her from flinging herself at him. Instead she laughed aloud, bringing a towel to her face to muffle the noise. Fitz! How could he be so good?

She must have looked a sight, because he put the things down quickly and hurried over to her, hand hovering over her shoulder. “Jemma? Are you having…um…hyst—”

“Hysterics? Maybe.” He was close enough to touch, so she did. 

“D’you need some water or—”

“I’m alright, Fitz, truly.” And she was. How could she be otherwise? He forgave her, without even hearing what for. She wasn’t stupid enough to pretend that this would fix everything—there was too much left to sort out—but it was a start, surely. A basic truth they could move forward assuming: whatever else there was, they were sorry and forgiven. Only— “Fitz!”

“What?”

“I didn’t say—I forgive you, too.”

His eyes lit up; his whole posture relaxed. “Yeah? Good. That’s, um, that’s good.”

And then they just stood there, grinning like fools, until one of them—Jemma didn’t remember who, later—realized it was nearly five a.m. and May would shortly be appearing for her Zen thing. Fitz took the stack of dishes in both hands while she wiped down the counters and flicked off the lights, not caring to explain what they had done to anyone else. What had happened here was just theirs. This should be a sacred moment.

“So,” Fitz said when they parted ways near the bunks, “Happy Pancake Day.”

“Happy Pancake Day, Fitz.” 

And many more, she allowed herself to think. And then she went to bed and slept, without dreaming, until lunch the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> Pancake Day in England and the former British Dominions is a supremely happy day, so I feel a little bad throwing all this angst at it. However, it was originally a day for confession and repentance before Lent, so it fit on multiple levels.


End file.
